SSD Hosting
Solid-state drives (SSDs) are making dramatic inroads into the world of web hosting. In this article, you’ll learn what benefits they provide and how they differ from traditional HDD (hard disk drive) hosting.
Should you choose SSD hosting over HDD hosting? You’ll receive guidance on how to make a good choice for your project or enterprise.
And we’ll share our personal recommendations for SSD hosting, drawn from our experience in software engineering.
What is a Solid State Drive?
SSD hosting plans run on servers that store your data on solid-state drives (SSDs). These devices use integrated circuit assemblies to store data.
SSDs are the latest big advancement in data storage technology, resulting in faster and more reliable hosting for your website than servers with traditional hard-disk drives (HDDs).
Solid-State vs Traditional Hard Disk Drives
SSDs can replace traditional HDDs, which store memory using electromechanical magnetic disks with spinning drives and movable read/write heads.
| Feature | SSD | HDD |
|---|---|---|
| Read Mechanism | Integrated circuitry | Mechanical arm |
| Energy Usage | Smaller power draw | Larger power draw |
| Cost | More expensive than HDDs | Cheaper |
| Maximum Capacity | Few limitations | Few limitations |
| Average Time Until Failure | ~2 million hours | ~1.5 million hours |
| Copy/Write Speeds | Up to 500 MB/sec (consumer-grade) | 50 – 120 MB/s |
Unlike HDDs, SSDs don’t have any moving parts and can access their stored data completely electronically instead of electromechanically.
That means they work faster and more efficiently and are less prone to mechanical failure.
And because they use the same interface technology as hard disk drives, it’s easy to upgrade from HDD to SSD.
Benefits of SSD Web Hosting
SSDs have a host of benefits over HDDs, mainly due to their superior speed and lack of moving parts.
Compared to HDDs, SSDs:
- Are more resistant to physical shock
- Run almost completely silently
- Don’t get as hot
- Have lower access time
- Are less prone to mechanical failure
- Use less power
- Have no need for defragmentation.
Improvements in SSDs
People used to think of SSD drives as having limited storage, but in recent years they have become available with multiple terrabyte capacity..
Still, the highest-capacity commercial solid-state storage drives can only hold about half the data as the corresponding HDDs.
SSDs require less electrical power and generate less heat than equivalent disk space.
These considerations are especially important in large cloud datacenters, power and cooling costs are a significant part of their operating costs, and cooling requirements limit the density of hard drive storage.
SSDs in Datacenters
A datacenter with higher-capacity, cooler solid-state drives can hold more terabytes in the same amount of real estate with lower maintenance costs.
Higher drive reliability gives web hosts better uptime. Storage drives don’t just stop working; most often, they gradually become unreliable.
Until a flaky drive is identified and taken out of service, it will cause intermittent data errors and crashes.
The longer MTBF (mean time between failures) of SSD storage means fewer problems of this kind.
Do You Need SSD Hosting for Your Website?
Do you want the fastest loading website possible? Tests on web pages hosted on SSD servers typically load 300% faster than those hosted on hard drive servers.
Are SSDs Faster?
Yes, they are. That’s because whenever an HDD needs to access its stored data, it needs to physically spin around to locate the information it needs to read or modify.
This usually adds just a few milliseconds to its access time, but those milliseconds add up quickly depending on the amount of traffic your website gets, or the data that needs to be accessed.
Why is Speed Important?
When your website traffic spikes, that additional loading time gets noticed by your visitors.
Most web users expect a page to load in 3 seconds or less, and when it takes longer, they’re quick to hit that “back” button.
Benefits of a Fast SSD-Powered E-Commerce Site
The additional speed granted by SSD hosting is especially critical for e-commerce websites, whose bottom lines are hit when they slow down.
Even just a 4-second load time results in 25% fewer sales, according to KISSmetrics.
If your website gets a lot of traffic, or you want it to be able to handle big traffic spikes without slowing down, SSD hosting is the way to go.
SSDs with Databases
Dynamic websites driven by databases will also benefit from SSD drives, which are much faster to access all the information they need in your database, shaving critical seconds off your page load time.
How much of a benefit you’ll get depends on whether disk speed or connection speed is the limiting factor.
SSDs with Dynamic Websites
If your site is highly interactive but doesn’t pull a lot of data from the drive, then you’ll be more concerned with processing speed and server bandwidth.
If it has to pull a large amount of information from a database to build a page, the speed of solid-state storage will be a major help.
CMSs like WordPress and Drupal tend to make heavy use of their databases, so an SSD can speed them up significantly.
When Are SSDs Essential?
In short, SSD hosting is almost essential for sites that:
- Get a lot of traffic
- Are dynamic in nature
- Rely heavily on database returns
- Serve up large files (such as those for podcasts or videos)
- Are e-commerce-oriented.
SSD Downside: Cost
The only significant downside to SSD hosting is the price. Though the price of SSDs has gone down in the past few years, they’re still more than double the price per gigabyte of storage than HDDs, and that’s typically reflected in SSD hosting plan pricing.
So if you’re on a tight budget and your site speed isn’t critical to your success, or if you place a higher priority on storage space than speed, you may want to stick with HDD hosting.
Hybrid Drives: A Budget-Friendly Alternative
Another option for those on a budget who still want the advantages of SSD hosting are plans that use hybrid drives, also called solid-state hybrid drives (SSHD).
SSHDs combine features of SSDs and HDDs in one drive, so you get the large storage space of HDD, and some of the improved performance of SSD in the form of an SSD cache for frequently accessed data.
How Do SSDs Affect Web Development?
Servers with SSD and clients on mobile devices are shifting the balance of resources on the web.
Solid-state storage gives the servers a big speed boost, but they’re often communicating with devices that have slow processors and data rates. This will affect the future of web development.
SSDs Don’t Solve Every Problem
SSD speed shouldn’t be a license to deliver bloated pages with lots of big image files.
They still have to travel at internet speeds to the device. That means a cell or WiFi connection more often than a broadband one. Restraint is still necessary.
The real win in SSD web hosting will come from server-side performance.
Database access is much faster, and web applications load more quickly.
A website with SSD storage, especially if it’s on a dedicated server, will be able to process huge amounts of data with impressive speed.
Reading vs Writing Data With SSDs
SSDs are better at reading than writing, both in speed and in the wear the operation puts on the drive.
Application developers will learn new techniques to take the best advantage of SSD performance.
The competition to develop faster, denser, and more durable solid-state technologies is fierce.
Chip designs with esoteric names like NAND and Intel’s 3D Xpoint deliver a performance that approaches main computer memory while breaking records for storage density.
The potential for further advances in the next few years seems almost unlimited.
Do SSDs Make HDDs Obsolete?
Will the SSD make the hard drive obsolete? Probably not for quite a while. Hard drives are better for archival purposes since an SSD left on the shelf for years will experience gradual data decay.
But once solid-state storage achieves price parity, perhaps by 2025, spinning disk drives will become a niche product like vinyl records.
Choosing an SSD Host
Many hosts provide SSD hosting for their VPS and dedicated hosting plans. If you have the budget and want the fastest, best-performing hosting you can get, look for a VPS or dedicated SSD hosting plan. But increasingly, shared hosting plans offer SSD storage.
Factors Influencing SSD Performance
The storage system is only one factor in getting high performance and speed from SSD web hosting.
Some companies make out-of-context boasts about the speed improvement from SSD storage, but even under the best of circumstances, a 20x boost in data access won’t give you a 20x boost in throughput.
Here are the main factors that determine SSD performance in hosting:
- Processing power
- Drive quality
- Datacenter location
- CDN quality
- Maintenance and support team.
Processing Power for SSD Hosting
Fast drives demand lots of processing power to make full use of them. A top-quality SSD web host should have the latest and fastest processors as well as the latest drives.
It should allocate a generous amount of main memory to each account.
If you go with a shared host, you want one that doesn’t load too many customers on one server.
Looking for a great deal on SSD hosting?
A2 Hosting consistently scores at or near the top in our speed and performance tests. They offer SSD hosting plans with unlimited storage and bandwidth. Now you can save up to 50% on their plans by using this discount link.
SSD Drive Quality
The quality of the drives is important. SSDs have a finite life, because every time a data location is written, it accumulates a little bit of electrical charge.
A web host’s drives get heavy use, and a consumer-quality drive that’s fine for your laptop won’t stand up under it.
The best drives can be written over many times, and they use complex logic to minimize the amount of writing and evenly distribute the use of storage cells.
They’ll last for years, surpassing the typical life of a hard drive.
In practice, more SSD drives fail because of circuitry issues or firmware bugs than wear. A good SSD host won’t skimp on drive quality.
Datacenter Location and CDNs
Proximity to your site’s audience is important. If you’ve got a localized audience, web hosts with a datacenter within a thousand miles or so are best.
If it’s widespread, you should look for a cloud hosting service with a CDN so that no one is too far from an edge server.
Other Factors
Also take general factors, such as support, security, and uptime into account.
Pick a hosting plan with all the resources you need. Speed is important, but so is keeping your site up and working properly. The quality of the host company and its suitability for your needs come ahead of any other considerations.
Price Trends and SSDs
SSD prices had an upward blip in 2017, but the overall price trend is downward.
International Data Corporation, a well-regarded market intelligence company, predicts that by 2021 the price premium for SSD over disk drives will be only a factor of 2.2.
Lower power, cooling, and real estate costs will further close the gap. As costs fall, more and more datacenters will adopt SSD in the coming years. Don’t feel you have to jump immediately if you can’t find the right host.
If you’re on a tight budget, another option is SSD shared hosting. Be sure to research the hosting company before you purchase a shared SSD hosting plan.
If the host oversells shared hosting, or you get a neighbor on your server that hogs all the resources, you won’t see any of the benefits of SSD hosting.
Pros of SSDs
- Higher read and write speed
- Lower power and cooling cost
- Greater reliability, since there are no moving parts
- Works offline
- Highly stable.
Cons of SSDs
- Higher cost
- Data is extremely difficult to access if an SSD breaks.
Our Top 3 SSD Hosting Choices
When looking for SSD hosting, check out of the top three options:
| SSD Storage | Backups | Datacenter Locations | Starting Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A2 Hosting | Unlimited | Not included | NA, EU, Asia | $3.92/mo |
| GreenGeeks | Unlimited | Auto (daily) | NA, EU | $2.95/mo |
| InMotion Hosting | Unlimited | Auto | NA | $2.95/mo |
A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting gives its customers SSD speed, guaranteed 99.9% uptime, and 24-hour support. They also off free a SSL certificate, CDN integration, and cPanel control panel with Softaculous for easy installation of hundreds of applications like WordPress.
If you want the fastest speed possible, you can go with their Turbo Servers.
These combine SSD storage with proprietary web server software, a limited number of users per machine, and several software optimizations.
A2 plans support dozens of frameworks and languages including Python, PHP, and Ruby. They also guarantee 99.9% uptime, with credit to your account if it falls short.
GreenGeeks
GreenGeeks offers an extra measure of reliability by using solid-state drives in RAID-10 arrays for their shared hosting plans.
They have two datacenters in the US, and one each in Canada and the Netherlands.
GreenGeeks also offers tons of features with their plans: Cloudflare CDN integration, SSL certificates, website builder, and cPanel. They also provide specialized CMS hosting for WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.
GreenGeeks also throws in a free domain name for the first year with their shared hosting plans.
InMotion Hosting
At InMotion Hosting, the focus is on business hosting, but the entry-level plan is affordable.
New customers get free advertising credits as part of their package, and all hosting plans include unlimited storage space and bandwidth.
The shared business hosting plans and VPS hosting use solid-state storage. They come with a free SSL certificate, cPanel control panel, and optional WordPress pre-installed.
Looking for quality SSD hosting with great support?
SiteGround – rated #1 by our readers – provides fast SSD servers and excellent customer support. Use this exclusive discount link to save up to 67% on their plans.
SSD Frequently Asked Questions
- What is a SSHD?
SSHD stands for Solid-State Hybrid Drive, generally known simply as a hybrid drive. An SSHD is a combination of an SSD and a HDD. Basically, the SSD acts as the cache for the HDD. They work very well, being much faster than HDDs but not all that much more expensive. However, they are not widely available in web hosting plans.
- Are SSDs better than HDDs?
In many ways, SSDs are considered better than HDDs. They are faster, last longer, and offer greater reliability overall. That said, SSDs are more expensive than HDDs, although this is understandable when one considers the complexity of SSDs. For example, they have no moving parts, unlike the somewhat dated mechanical HDDs.
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